Thursday, May 14, 2009

Power Trails back in the discussion

Two years ago I wrote about power trails and explained the reasons behind Groundspeak's guidelines and restrictions against placing lots of caches in a row along a trail. That posting led to a number of excellent comments on this site. This spring some additional geocaches were submitted that I felt crossed the sometimes grey line into what constitutes a power trail -- a series of caches along the new Old Creamery Trail near Vinton and a series (not yet published) along the Little Sioux River near Cherokee. In both cases I have corresponded with the cache owners and we have had polite and constructive dialog to get as many as the caches approved as possible while complying with the intent of the power trail guideline. As I said two years ago, power trails are a difficult area of the guidelines for me as a reviewer to interpret and enforce. But if you read what I wrote back in June 2007 about them, and what I wrote in the subsequent comment discussion, it gives you a pretty good insight into what the guidelines are asking -- at least my interpretation of those guidelines.

2 comments:

I saw the one's on the trail near Vinton come out. I'm thinking they where all submitted at the saem time. But I did kind of like how you spaced them out publishing them. Did a certain number of them in a day, then wait a day or two for the next batch and so on.

I don't get into the FTF thing. But that method of approving gives more people that like to go for the FTF a chance at getting one.

I do agree with you the powertrail guideline can be confusing. But what's the difference between one person making say a bike trail loaded with a lot of hides, or it happening over a long period of time by different people or even the same person?

I think there's probably a different interpretation of that guideline if any by different review's and what's is allowed might vary from reviewer to reviewer.

At least the cacher's you are dealing with are working with you on these, and not just demanding they be published.

I've cached a few power trail's and I don't like it when each hide is the same thing over and over again. If there is some variety in hides such as different types and sizes of container's, and maybe if it's more than one hider then you see different hiding styles. Then that makes a nice trail to cache along. One's with the same "matchstick" toss in a pine tree over and over I don't think are very much fun.

Just some thought's on the power trail's I guess.

Good luck with working that stuff out!!!

And would you please stop publishing them right after my PQ run's. lol. ;)

Sorry about the removed comment field. I didn't do a typo check before I submitted it.

What others are saying about this blog

...it's interesting to know how people who approve caches think. Glad I came across your blog and I'll be watching for more!

Posted by justjohn, June 18, 2008:

I've just begun my foray into Geocaching here in Okinawa, Japan, and I was looking for a blog like this to help me.Your tips include things that I never would have thought of, even after reading the FAQ on geocaching.com Thanks again!

About Me

I've been geocaching since Feb. 2001, and I've been a reviewer since 2003. As a reviewer, I started out using the ID WGA2, but other reviewers have since used that ID for approving caches in Wisconsin so I started a new ID (IowaAdmin) in July 2005. My "regular" IDs are kbraband (for solo geocaching) and active2gether (for caches I find with my wife). While some reviewers believe in hiding their true identities, I don't do that. I believe that by working together with fellow geocachers to get caches approved according to the geocaching.com guidelines in a cordial and consistent manner, there should be no reason to keep my ID secret.